We’ve talked about Droid phones before, but this one is certainly more attractive. Read it and you’ll know why! The Droid Eris was used to be called the Hero. The difference is that Verizon is selling it for half the price, which makes it the cheapest Android phone you can buy—and the best, for the money.
The Eris is rubbery blob, a narrow oval that as subdued as a phone could possibly be, but there is admittedly something comforting about the Eris’s utter lack of personality—it’s completely non-threatening, like a middle manager. It’s so generic it’s almost artful, actually, a design that is nearly perfect for a cheap phone.The four main Android buttons are touch sensitive, bleeding into the black bezel, hovering over the dead-center trackball and hard chrome buttons for phone and end. I’d like a dedicated camera button, but a volume rocker is all we get. The camera lens stares out the back, disturbingly more reminiscent of an eye than most cameras sticking out the backs of phones, probably because of how stark the rest of the phone is.
The actual guts and screen are the same as past Hero phones—which is to say, nearly the same as all of HTC’s other Android phones so far. The 480×320 screen’s still nice, even if it feels dated now that the Droid’s massive screen, beckoning the next generation, looms large over it. The still camera’s better than the Droid though, and about the same as the Sprint version of the Hero, performing pretty decently in low-light situations. Video, not so much.
Again it’s really cheap, only at the cost of $100. This makes some weaknesses ignorable, and makes it a great phone, that’s pretty spiffy, actually…So why don’t you buy one if you happen to be looking for a phone. (More details on Droid Eris at:www.tradeage.com)
